


Dreamscapes

by Blacksquirrel



Category: Le Pacte des Loups | Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)
Genre: 18th Century, Canon Character of Color, First Time, French and Indian War, Interracial Relationship, M/M, POV Character of Color, War, Winter Solstice, Yuleporn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:32:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blacksquirrel/pseuds/Blacksquirrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Born a strong dreamer destined to a solitary path, Mani seeks the clarity to recognize the turning points of his life, and the courage to embrace the unexpected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreamscapes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alby_mangroves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alby_mangroves/gifts).



> Many thanks to my excellent and swift betas kitsune13 and RevolutionaryJo.
> 
> Alby_Mangroves also made a gorgeous sketch in response: http://archiveofourown.org/works/1113622/chapters/2242312

Mani dreamed most clearly in the crisp winter air. On his solitary retreat the stars above shone ever brighter against the vast mid-winter sky, reminding him of his place as one small, but necessary thread within the fabric of creation. The expanse of snow blanketing the landscape in all directions cast a hush over every living thing, as even animals seemed to pause in their labors and reflect upon the turning of the season. Thus, while other leaders remained with the tribe to celebrate the lengthening of days and show gratitude, Mani walked this path alone, as he had many times before.

His mother, too, had been a strong dreamer, and she foretold the singular path his life would take. She said that while she carried him, if she lay sleeping with her hands to her sides, she dreamed of the tribe’s future, but if she placed her hands upon her round belly, she could see that her child would inherit her own strange destiny, to live as one apart. “For a time, we have each other, my little wise man,” she would say as she stroked his brow while he fell asleep, “but our souls must each take a great journey, and that we will only discover alone.”

Throughout his childhood he learned from her how to serve their people by treating sicknesses of the body and soul. He molded his small hands to hers as she coaxed medicine from the earth, and followed in her footsteps from one world to the next, when she showed him how to walk through dreams. Listening to her unravel their people’s future, he slowly learned to discern the difference between the tricky, winding pathways of the dreamscape, and the signs that a true dream had arrived.

His mother treated even the most seemingly insignificant of such messages with grave respect. Regardless of whether they indicated the deepest desire of a single individual, or illuminated the safest way forward for the entire tribe or nation, she could neither eat nor sleep until the dream found its footing in the waking world. On the few occasions when the Women’s Council or the War Council refused to heed her warnings, Mani learned the power of hunger and patience as they stood from sunrise to sunset together in the center of the village, mute but potent advocates for the invisible will of the universe. During their longest vigil - a day, a night, and a day - Mani watched his mother’s blazing eyes set within her unmoving face and began to understand why they lived alone, and what it meant that he had no father. “I belong with no man, and I belong with no woman,” his mother would say. “My body is wind. I am made of dreams.” Standing alone while the village moved around them, Mani gave his rumbling stomach to the wind. That day, she taught him that their bodies were merely a tool in the hands of the dream they served.

From the time he neared adulthood, his mother began to live as one hunted by an invisible enemy, with a sack always packed by the door and her boots close at hand. Many times she would take up the sack and put on her boots, only to stop at the door, as if heeding an unheard voice. “Not yet,” she would say. “Today is not the time.” And then she would slip off her boots, unburden herself of the weight of the future, and continue on with their life together. Mani was not surprised when one day, at long last, the boots and sack were gone, and without a word, he never saw his mother again. He sat in the emptiness of their house at the edge of the village and hoped that this journey would reunite his mother’s restless soul with her true purpose.

Like her, Mani received many glimpses of the future; and yet also like her, throughout his life he was gifted with but one big dream. It was the first dream he could remember, and the only dreamscape to which he could return time and again. The dream lived, grew, and expanded around him as he aged, slowly yielding its secrets, but always holding something shimmering, just out of sight. Water, he thought. Water, and a sunset, and something beyond the horizon.

In the spidery opening threads of the dream, Mani saw himself walking through the woods, and as he traveled the seasons changed around him from spring to summer, and fall to winter. As thick clusters of squash blossoms bloomed and the sun shone brightly on his face, a stream appeared and he followed along its banks. Soon, a masked wolf appeared, sitting on its hind legs and raising one paw. Mani saw himself kneel before it, remove its mask, and raise one hand to mirror its stance, meeting palm to paw. The wolf nodded in recognition, then turned to disappear into the underbrush.

Mani watched himself stand and continue along the river bank while the leaves flushed crimson and crunched under his feet. Along a tricky bend his foot caught on a protruding root and he fell painfully into a patch of brambles. Pulling himself free, he lay in the cool earth, fearful of even looking at the angry, bleeding scratches surely left by the brambles’ clutch. Again a masked wolf emerged from the forest, and began bathing his wounds with its tongue, nudging his cheek with its snout, and whining in shared commiseration. Once the pain faded he allowed the wolf to guide him toward the stream where he drank deeply, then they sat on the bank together for an age, the wolf’s now unmasked head in his lap, and his hand stroking its thick, coarse fur.

As time passed, Mani began to see his breath, white and chill on the wind, and felt the wolf cringe as if in pain. He gathered it in his arms and continued walking down the bank. There the stream came to a fork, and down both paths he heard sounds of fighting and strife. The wolf leapt from his arms, and plodded down the fork to the left, pausing to turn and tilt its head in question.

This moment was different in every dreaming. Sometimes he turned right and awakened. Sometimes he sat at the edge of the stream and refused to choose, spending hours of restless slumber trying to see deeper into the meaning of that place. When he chose to follow the wolf to the left and the unseen darkness there, he felt new layers of emotion wash over him as he grew older. At first his heart leapt with the excited wolf when he joined it on their new adventure. Later, as the wolf leapt to greet him when he joined it on the left path, he nearly fell to his knees under the onslaught of desire and love that flowed through him. As he and his mother interpreted this dream together and these new emotions emerged, she looked at him sharply, as if he had betrayed her, and withdrew from their dreamtelling.

Days later, she told him a story of a man of flesh and blood walking far from home, set upon by a tricky western wind that danced in his hair and jangled his necklaces together. The man delighted in the wind’s embrace, gathering blades of grass to throw toward the sky, so they could play together. He and the wind rolled on soft grass, swooped through fallen leaves, and surrounded each other in a tickling caress. As the sun set, the man lay on the soft earth with the wind still stirring against the surface of his skin, sending chill tingles across his lips. In the morning, the wind was gone, but it carried within it the heavy presence of the man’s memory.

At this Mani’s mother ran her fingers across his lips. “Breath of my breath,” she said, “but I had no flesh to give you, so you wear the flesh of another. Your destiny is mine, but your flesh has other desires. Your body will never truly be wind, as mine is.” She said it sadly, and Mani turned his head away in contrition for the failures of his future self. “Hmmmm,” his mother said in her faraway dream voice. “Do not feel ashamed, my little wise man.” She put a finger beneath his chin and tilted his face up to meet her eyes. “There is no shame in doing something unexpected - only in avoiding what is marked on your heart.” Then she cuddled him against her chest and asked him to tell her the dream again.

In the cool embrace of the dreamscape, many false paths beckoned to him from the shadowy wood, but Mani would not be swayed. Committed, he watched himself follow the wolf to the left as snow began to fall, and winter descended in earnest. He and the wolf walked together past an endless expanse of white-flocked trees. Sometimes they ran and jumped in tandem, the wolf winding between his legs, and he darting out a hand to catch its tail. Other times they paused to rest and huddle together, his hands threaded through the wolf’s heavy coat. Yet eventually the snow fell so thickly that Mani could not see more than an arm’s length ahead, and at that moment, a third masked wolf appeared in their path, growling and bearing its teeth. The wolf at his side snarled and crouched in front of him defensively, but before it could spring the other wolf had already leapt, and it bore him down to the ground, its jaws slicing deeply into his throat.

As a child he would wake and cry when the other wolf appeared, and only as he grew older could he see deeper, push further past the red of his blood on the snow. In flashes he heard a wolf howling in mourning, felt tears on his cheek and a tongue desperately trying to heal his wound, and out of the corner of his eye, a fox emerging from the forest. Then shimmering, a sunset, and the lingering feeling upon waking of something more, always kept out of sight.

After his mother’s departure, Mani became the only skilled dream interpreter and medicine maker of their village; although some knew a few remedies, or were sometimes gifted with strong dreams of the tribe’s path, none had the knowledge, accomplishments, or power of his mother. He struggled to bear the burdens of the whole village - those she shouldered so resolutely - and live the solitary existence she followed before his birth. Thus, the year after she left, he took his first retreat at midwinter, entrusting the usual ritual obligations to a wise woman who knew the proper rites. Within the village the press of other people’s dreams and the tribe’s future weighed heavily upon him, but he carried it gladly. He was breath of her breath, the child of dreams and flesh, and it was a destiny he felt honored to uphold. But to serve them and yet not be truly of them wore at him in a way that never seemed to wound his mother, who stayed tethered to one people and one place only long enough to teach him, before traveling on toward her ultimate destination. He knew that in other villages, people like them had wives and husbands, dwelled in longhouses with their kin, and lived as one people. But he had inherited a different legacy, and at mid-winter he retreated alone to renew his connection to himself, honor his mother, and seek guidance for the coming year. It also became a sanctuary, sealed off from his worldly obligations to the daily concerns of others, when he could commune most closely with the dream world, and accept the serenity that rewarded his solitary path.

Three years after his mother’s departure, he entered his big dream again. He saw once more the three masked wolves, and the shimmering light, but instead of waking he found himself returning again and again to the summer of his dream, kneeling before the first wolf, fitting his palm to its paw. His mother had warned him that only in recognizing these three wolves who would mark his life, could he enable the great journey his soul longed to take. Upon awakening on the last day of the mid-winter festival, Mani felt certain that the first wolf would soon cross his path.

At his return he found the village still in a flurry of activity, more suited to the beginning rather than the end of the festival, and he saw a stranger by the fire, smoking with a cluster of elders. A group of children ran up to Mani, yelling, “He is for you!”

Mani settled himself by the fire and accepted a pipe. Everyone wanted to be the first to tell him the news, so he received the story in small bits, out of order, as each elder shared a different part, and the stranger sat, silent and smiling, on the other side of the fire. He sailed with the Spanish, and deserted his ship. When they reached New Orleans, the crew mutinied and all were now hunted by the Spanish. He sought refuge and a place to spend the winter. He came from the Indies, far across the ocean, and knew much of the many peoples there.

Taking Mani’s hand in hers, the woman next to him explained, “He is a spirit man, and wishes to learn from your gift with dreams. Will you take him in, Mani?”

“Of course,” he agreed, turning to address the stranger. “I have been waiting for you for a long time,” he said, and the rightness of the words resonated within him. Thus the first wolf came to him easily, and shed its mask with no deceit. Mani offered silent thanks to the spirit for its generosity in this gift, but also knew it portended much greater trials to come.

Thus Mani passed the bitter heart of winter with the stranger, holed up together in the little house at the edge of the village, warmed by the summer of his heart. He was known as Vraja, for the place of his birth, and as a sailor he had seen many wonders and crewed ships with people of many lands. As a result, he knew several languages, and they found English as their common tongue, each making do, fitting their thoughts to the alien words.

On the first morning, Mani woke to find Vraja moving slowly in the low light of the fire, eyes distant, fluidly pushing against and retreating from unseen forces. Flowing like water, he shaped his body into one long plane, stretched his limbs to the breaking point, then struck sharply, as if delivering a blow to an unseen foe. When Vraja stilled at last, Mani emerged from his furs to tend the fire, and asked, “Where did you go?”

Vraja studied him for a long moment, then nodded and said, “Many people reach for god, or meaning, or transcendence through forms like those.”

“They are beautiful, and the spirit is in all things,” Mani acknowledged.

“Yes!” Vraja agreed eagerly, “And all people have their own path to understanding. Perhaps I could teach you the forms in exchange for showing me your dream work?”

Mani pondered that proposal. Many of the secrets of dreamwalking were reserved only for a chosen few who showed innate ability. Could he share them with this stranger? Silently Mani held up his hand palm forward and waited, smelling summer blossoms and hearing the distant echo of flowing water. Vraja watched him contemplatively, tilting his head to the side. Then he lifted his hand and placed his palm against Mani’s, holding his gaze, and something within Mani shifted into place. He nodded in respect but an irrepressible grin split his somber expression. “I would be honored to learn your forms,” he said, “but for now, let us eat while you tell me what you dreamed last night.”

Thereafter their spirits entwined as each morning they shaped their bodies and souls to each others’ patterns. Vraja told his dreams with great animation, miming the movements of animals and mimicking the voices and languages of people who appeared to him in sleep. Yet, no matter how many times Mani tried to guide him, he showed no aptitude for crossing lucidly from one world to the next, nor for discerning strong dream paths from illusion.

In contrast, Mani’s body yearned for the forms Vraja poured into it, and he mastered step after step of the slow, meditative movements. Each people that he learned from taught a different series of forms, and each series taught a different lesson, Vraja explained. Vraja stumbled over those intended to reconcile the present with the past, and in those for cultivating detachment, Mani’s stomach rumbled. “You must become empty before you can be filled,” Vraja intoned, and Mani poured himself into the wind. 

Eventually, after one long morning practice in which Mani’s body flew through the forms even before Vraja could call their names, Vraja sat in meditation for a long while. When he arose he tended the fire, and staring into its embers he quietly asked, “Do the holy men of your people also fight in war?”

“At times,” Mani answered, “when they are needed and when they see themselves on that path.”

“And have you been called to that path?” Vraja asked.

Mani looked into the embers as well, seeing in their flickering light the child he had been, following in his mother’s footprints. “When I was a child,” he explained, “I lived here with my mother and learned her way with medicine and dreams. I did not learn to hunt, or plant, or weave, or fight as other children did. I was not born to be a man or a woman, but to be wind.”

Vraja nodded, “Male and female, good and evil, this world and the world of shadows, all of these are irresolvable opposites, but one who truly lives in the spirit is whole.”

The embers cracked at their feet as they both gave the words space to settle, before Mani continued, “Many of the other boys did not understand this, and some derided me for doing women’s work. Among my people, a boy may become a woman, but few remain in-between. My mother scolded them many times, saying ‘There is no shame in doing the unexpected, only in not fulfilling your heart’s purpose.’ Knowing her power, they shrank from her, but their taunts often haunted me, and so although I was small for my age and untrained, many times I snuck away to join the boys’ wrestling matches.”

“And did your mother catch you?’ Vraja asked.

“She shook her head over my bruises and asked what I thought they would accomplish, but I told her that I only needed to win once. She nodded, but still scowled as she said ‘Failure is indeed a wise teacher, but winning will not feel as you expect.’ ”

“And did the small boy win a big wrestling match?” Vraja asked.

“He did,” Mani acknowledged. “I lost many times to boys around my age and size, until one day I challenged a much larger, older boy. Everyone laughed, called me a woman and said I had no place in wrestling or battle. But I had already learned all the ways to lose, and this time could avoid them. After that day none of them taunted me again and they reserved a place for me in the wrestling ring, on hunting parties, and eventually on war parties. All were surprised that I simply returned to this house with my mother and continued living as I had always done. Several times dreams called me to join a hunt or a raid and I acceded to these signs, but my spirit is, as you say, already whole. My mother was right. Winning did not feel as I expected. It did not make me complete, but it did make me free. None would again question the rightness of my unexpected path.”

Vraja turned from the flames, and studied Mani. “This tribe follows the turtle sign, yes?” he asked. Mani nodded in agreement. “But you,” Vraja tentatively questioned, “You live among them, but are not of them. You are a wolf.”

Mani laughed and Vraja frowned, as if chastised, but Mani clasped their hands together and said, “The dream student has seen true at last. I am indeed a wolf and,” Mani laid his hand on Vraja’s chest, above his heart, “so too are you, my brother.”

Vraja’s frown lifted and joined Mani’s joyful laughter. He offered, “The forms are meant for wolves as well. They find their greatest expression in one who can both fight and heal, reach the body and the soul. Now that we see each other clearly, we can truly dance.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When the ice over the rivers broke and plants awoke from slumber, Vraja departed, seeking a new vessel and new horizons. As Vraja left the village, Mani held up one hand with his palm facing outward, and Vraja returned the gesture. They had spent a season of their lives together, and Mani knew that he had been forever changed by this chance to teach and be taught, to know and be known so truly. Yet, this was but the first turn in the great journey of his soul, and although the warm spring breeze everywhere coaxed the earth into bud and bloom, it chilled Mani with the shadow of his heart’s dawning autumn.

His time with Vraja deepened his awareness, strengthened his connection to himself, and channeled the power of his insight as never before. In the years that followed his renown as a master of medicine and healer of the body and soul grew, and his reputation as a fighter spread, although he still refused to join war parties unless specifically guided by his own or others’ dreams. Many in the village, and neighboring villages, wished to practice with him, and to learn his techniques, but few had the patience to start with the slow, meditative roots of the forms, and so he took few students. Yet although he bore the weight of his people’s health gladly, his soul remained restless, and he looked for the wolf in the face of every stranger. As years passed, his vigilance waned, and he sought comfort in the arms of travelers with kind eyes and generous spirits; yet he never forgot his big dream, and still tried to remember that this wolf would not shed its mask so easily- or perhaps he would not let it.

When the pox came to the village, Mani had little fear for himself, and refused food and rest while desperately soothing the cries of suffering that surrounded him. His journey still remained unfinished, but many others dreamed of a dark lane obscured by thick snow, a forest path disappearing into dense trees, or the depths of night, and Mani knew only drastic action could avert so many strong portents. He entered every longhouse, cradling his people and consoling the shocked survivors as they grieved their lost children. For many days he passed through the village like the wind, until at last, shaking with exhaustion, he collapsed, and his people gathered up his weak body in despair and carried him to his little house at the edge of the village, to weather the illness alone.

A fever trapped him in dreams, and he wandered, powerless, stripped of his ability to navigate the dreamscape. He heard screaming and wailing in the distance, and again and again saw himself bleeding at the river’s edge, his flesh sliced deeply by brambles. When he opened his eyes he saw nothing but the wolf lunging for him, and his blood on snow. Thus when a warm hand touched his throat he weakly raised his hands to push it away, as he saw only the wolf, closing in once more. Yet pain did not follow, and when he looked again, he saw a wolf in the shape of a man, crouching over him in concern. The man’s icy blue gaze locked him in place, and he lacked the energy to evade its probing depths. A noise outside startled the man, and he reached into his pocket, retrieving a long string of beads, which he strung around Mani’s unresisting head.

The sound of French words on the man’s lips froze Mani in place. Although the war had always seemed distant from their village, they were still sworn in alliance with the British, and this was surely the enemy he had foreseen, come to him out of order, too soon. His restless soul ached within him at the thought of having missed his dream's promised companionship due to inattention, and an inability to see past his fated lover’s mask. All lost to him, now that fate had delivered him into the hands of the enemy who would send him to his final horizon.

A group of men crashed in, filling the little house to bursting. They shouted and gestured sharply. Mani could not understand more than a few words of French, but he could read people, and these vultures intended to kill him while he lay in his bed, weak with sickness. The wolf man turned his back to Mani to face the pack. He did not shout, but spoke to them in a flow of quiet, gentle words. Then he made the sign of the cross and spread his hands wide to his sides. The gesture looked like surrender, but the men at the door became profoundly uncomfortable, shuffling their feet and studying the ground. Only one among them pushed forward and spoke angry words with his finger outstretched.

At this, the wolf man stepped aside and gestured at Mani’s throat. Mani’s breath caught within him; the end had come, as he dreamed. He tried to raise his arms, to fight with the last of his strength, but fever gripped him tightly and he could not even struggle in these final moments. With wide eyes, he watched the angry vulture approach and lean over his body, then inhaled almost painfully when the man jumped back from him as if burned. He shouted once more at the wolf man, pointing rapidly at the beads on Mani’s chest, but in his stooped shoulders Mani could see that the crisis had passed, and the wolf man only raised his hands again, tilted his head to one side, and shrugged. His body eloquently said, “What can we do? What’s done is done.”

When the vultures retreated, the wolf man’s body quaked like a sprung bow, and he returned to Mani’s bedside, laying one hand on Mani’s brow. Frowning and letting out a low hum, he pulled down Mani’s blanket and examined his chest and arms, looked deeply into his eyes, and then laid his fingers along the sides of Mani’s neck. Mani tensed again, yet the man’s fingers remained gentle, as he probed the tender muscles from Mani’s ears to his shoulders. He lowered his head to Mani’s chest and rested his ear above Mani’s heart. Mani smelled drying leaves and heard the brittle rattle of a fall breeze. In numb shock, he placed his shaking hand in the wolf man’s hair, and contemplated the dream tableau. It could not be, he thought. Perhaps in this, he had not dreamed true.

The man let out a low laugh, then straightened, Mani’s hand falling limply back to the bed. “My Mohawk very bad,” he said in broken, ill-shaped words. Mani could not help but nod in agreement, and the man chuckled again. “ _Algonquin_?” he queried.

“ _Little_ ,” Mani replied in that tongue, “ _et un peu de français_. Do you speak English?”

“We will make do in English,” he agreed. “My name is _Chevalier_ Grégoire de Fronsac, and I owe you a great debt. Although that rosary saved you, I could not prevent the atrocity that took the lives of the rest of your village.”

A dark lane obscured by thick snow. A forest path disappearing into dense trees. The deepest dark of night. A long cry of mourning burst from Mani’s heart. He had not been strong enough to avert these portents, and his people paid the price.

Fronsac grabbed his hand in panic, shushing him with the other hand outstretched, as if to snatch his cry from the air. “The danger has not passed!” he warned. “You do not have the pox, but you are ill and weak. They let you live because I convinced them you are a praying Mohawk; one of the followers of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, allied with France and sent here to convert your brethren. The rosary and your distance from the village helped, but we must remain vigilant to protect the subterfuge.”

In a voice thinned by weariness, Mani asked, “What would you have me do? My people are gone. How would you have me live?” His gaze flitted beyond Fronsac to alight on the doorway, where he saw his mother stoop to lift her sack and tie her boots for the last time. She turned back to look at him and smiled, freed to wander as her heart always desired once the village rested safely in his hands. If she still lived, had she felt it when they died? Had she gasped under the crush of disappointment from his failure to carry her burden?

“I do not know,” Fronsac admitted, “but I would have you live.”

With that, Fronsac gathered Mani to him, lifted him from his bed, and carried him out into the world beyond. So it went for many days, as Fronsac tended Mani’s body, carrying him out of sickness, with Mani peering backwards over his shoulder, and his trailing hand still reaching for the past.

Mani did not hinder Fronsac’s ministrations, but nor did he aid them. A different emptiness swallowed him than those he knew from the wind and the forms, when he pushed out attachment and desire to let something else rush in. Even the security usually imparted by his big dream proved elusive. How could he lie in contentment with a French wolf while his village still cried out to him from their graves?

“Tell me about them,” Fronsac coaxed, and Mani’s grief smothered his reticence, so he began to speak in fits and starts about the people his weak flesh betrayed. Despite himself, he took the comfort offered by Fronsac’s kind eyes and gentle touch, as Fronsac continued to tend his body while Mani’s storytelling lanced the fever in his soul.

As days passed a subtle vibration began to displace Fronsac’s usual soothing openness during these tales. Finally, one day, Fronsac cut into Mani’s expression of regret. “There was nothing you could have done,” Fronsac said at last, spitting the words as if they tasted bitter in his mouth. “My Captain sent the pox in boxes of blankets under the banner of peace.” Shaking his head before Mani could speak, he insisted, “It was not you. It was the pox. The pox, and my own inaction.” At this he would no longer meet Mani’s eyes, and he withdrew from the tent they shared.

The words landed like a blow, and Mani strained against his frail flesh, cursing the weakness that thwarted the demands of his rage. Although he could now sit up, stand, and even walk with Fronsac to lean against, his legs would not hold him long enough to take one last walk, through the encampment and to the Captain’s tent. Biting down hard on the demand for vengeance, he told himself to wait, remember his mother, and cultivate patience.

Many hours passed before Fronsac returned, face lined with tension and hands a flurry of agitation as he stood by the tent flap, aimlessly shifting his weight and looking anywhere but at Mani. With a voice gaining strength by the day, Mani broke the thick silence, demanding “Will you speak the truth to me?” 

“Anything,” Fronsac quickly replied.

“You have power and rank here, as a _Chevalier_ ,” Mani noted. “You saved me and you feel remorse for my people’s fate. Why did you not prevent it?”

Fronsac lifted his hands to his face in shame and Mani watched for endless moments as he struggled with himself. When he spoke he did not move his hands, and his voice sounded muffled, and far away. Fronsac said, “I did not know about the blankets until too late, but I knew the Captain’s evil; I should have watched more closely, dogged his heels more persistently. When we arrived at the village I should have stopped such dishonorable slaughter, should have saved more than only you.”

“And what happens to a _Chevalier_ who defies a Captain,” Mani pushed.

“That depends,” Fronsac considered, peaking over his fingers. “He outranks me in the army and these men are his own, each one handpicked and loyal. Yet, I have the blessing and favor of the king, although the king is far off and cannot know what happens on a woodland battlefield an ocean away. We test each other, he and I, dancing precariously at the edge of a cliff, each leading the other one step closer to the edge with every passing day.”

Mani closed his eyes, and immediately sensations and images surfaced, of the rushing sound of water, a warm tongue bathing his wounds, and deep beseeching lupine eyes. It cannot be, a part of him still protested, but he could no longer deny the truth of this vision, nor allow himself to ever again misrecognize or fail to live up to the burdens of the future. Opening his eyes he reached for Fronsac and peeled his hands away from his face.

“They would have killed you,” Mani said flatly, “and your soul still has work to do. It was not you, it was the pox. The pox and my own inaction.” Fronsac opened his mouth to protest or beg forgiveness, but Mani would tolerate neither, and he spoke over him, continuing, “We must both bear it, and we both owe a great debt. Will you pay it with me?” Fronsac’s face, so often jovial, so often soothing or coaxing, hardened to stone. He said, “On what is left of my honor, I promise you. We will repay it, measure for measure.”

As days passed, they plotted together, and Mani no longer laid listless with one hand gripping the past, but instead felt the past pushing him forward, toward a shimmer, a sunset, and a fork in the stream. He pushed himself to stand, to walk, and to force himself through many series of forms, stretching and heaving his weary body back to strength. Fronsac watched quietly while Mani willed the forms to flow through his body once more, until he returned to his pallet, shaking with exhaustion.

“You are a great master of those forms when you are well,” Fronsac observed.

“But perhaps not as great as my teacher,” Mani acknowledged.

Thinking of the way his spirit tangled with Vraja’s as they practiced together, Mani considered the wolf hidden inside of Fronsac. Testing, he asked, “Would you like to meditate with me?”

At Fronsac’s nod, he showed him how to fold his legs and where to place his hands. “Greet each thought as it comes, then turn away from it,” Mani whispered. “Let them blow through your mind like the wind. Then find the silent, empty space within yourself and wait.”

Mani closed his eyes and let himself drift, not reaching for the dreamworld, but listening for signs of disquiet from his potential pupil. Many who came to him could not settle within the stillness needed to pursue the fullest expression of the forms, and Mani could feel their resistance in the insistent wiggle of their feet, their wordless murmurs, and the slouching that signaled their inner defeat at the hands of spiritual forces they were not destined to understand.

Yet from Fronsac he felt only ease, as they sat for a timeless age, their breath blowing in and out in sync. When Mani felt the meditation come to its end, he reached out and touched Fronsac’s hand, guiding it to press against his, palm to palm. Fronsac’s eyes opened, steady and strong, and Mani smiled at his new student.

As the future slid into place, he said, “Last night, what did you dream?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It would have to be done at night, they agreed, at a time when as many men as possible would be gone on scouting missions and patrols. Having long since lost the Captain’s trust, these duties were no longer delegated to Fronsac, so he could tend to their lessons and plans at leisure. Inside the tent they moved through the forms with increasing rapidity as Mani’s body mended and Fronsac absorbed their structures; yet outside the tent, Mani continued to lean feebly on Fronsac’s arm, limping strongly when they crossed the encampment to hide his renewed health. Deep in the forest they could fully dance through the forms, flying through the air and molding their bodies together beyond the reach of prying eyes.

Here too Mani sought to teach Fronsac the scouting, hunting, and stealth for which The People of the Flint were known and feared, but found to his surprise that Fronsac did not clomp about on his heels, oblivious to all around him, as did most white men he had known before. When Fronsac returned to their clearing after scouting the forest alone, he guided Mani’s cupped hands around his own, and released a small yellow bird through their joined grasp. Mani smiled in wonder and asked, “Were you a hunter?”

“When necessary,” Fronsac replied, “but I learned these skills to study, not to kill. I am a naturalist.” And over their entwined hands he told many stories of his work, the tribes he had lived among, the beautiful places he had seen, and the reason their tent was cramped by large, heavy cases of samples.

“Are you an herbalist?” Mani asked. “Do you make medicine?”

Fronsac tilted his head, “In a fashion, but I believe in few of the spiritual forces of my people, or any people. I believe in the chemical properties of plants, and the power of the human mind.”

“And yet you excel in meditation and the forms,” Mani noted. He stroked his thumbs along Fronsac’s thumbs, then raised his hands to place one at Fronsac’s temple, and the other over his heart. “Perhaps your body believes something your mind cannot yet acknowledge.”

Looking at the forest canopy high above where the yellow bird now perched, Fronsac considered this. “Perhaps,” he said, and Mani knew this conversation would continue all their days together.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One day, as midwinter approached and evening fell, Fronsac burst into their tent, whispering, “The time has arrived.”

“Come,” Mani instructed, and Fronsac knelt before him as Mani began to blacken their faces, and Fronsac’s hair, with ash, running his fingers over Fronsac’s features with long, soothing strokes. Offering one last chance to withdraw, he asked softly, “Can you do this? Can you kill your fellows?”

“They are not my people,” Fronsac affirmed. “I will pay what is owed, and they will pay as well.”

“Yes,” Mani said, placing a hand on Fronsac’s chest, over his heart. “You live among them, but you are not of them. They are vultures, and you are a wolf.”

“And you? I do not see you as a bear or turtle,” Fronsac noted.

“You are right,” Mani agreed, relieved and at peace now that all masks could be discarded and they saw each other as their true selves. “I am your brother.”

Once recommitted, their will carried them through the encampment like wind. Without thought, without effort, all who crossed their path fell before them. First they cut down the Captain’s guards, then the man himself, staring up at Mani with shocked, unseeing eyes. Mani might have lingered there, covered in blood, staring down at the man who brought about the end of the world for his people. All his life he had prepared to carry the weight of his people’s souls, and for a time he shouldered it well. Now he had completed the last responsibility that he could ever bear for them, and he wondered if his mother too had realized that freedom did not feel as she expected. Emptiness becomes ravenous with no spirit to fill it. And yet, there was still Fronsac, waiting for him in the shadows, and the Fronsac of his dreams, waiting upstream, turning back to see if he would follow. Mani left the corpse behind and did not look back.

After they washed the past away with the blood and ash of their bodies, they returned to Fronsac’s tent and waited for a scout to find the Captain and inform them of Fronsac’s temporary reassignment. With the Captain slain, Fronsac would become the highest ranking officer, and he intended to remove them from the field of battle, constructing as ineffectual and unobtrusive a path through the woods as possible, back to Quebec City where he would request the formalization of his rank and new orders. In that time, the war may well be over, as the tide had already begun to turn against them, if reports were to be believed.

As they waited, Mani knelt by the fire in a meditation posture, testing the thin midwinter air, until he found purchase to step through the void, and walk into the dreamscape. There he saw himself again at the river’s edge, body broken and bleeding as Fronsac wept above him. If they remained together, must this be his future? His yearning flesh urged him forward, to accept this price as fair payment for the years he could spend no longer alone, no longer one apart.

Yet, out of the corner of his eye he saw the fox again, sneaking out from the tree line, and the shimmering something beyond which usually snapped him back to the present. This time, with the clarity of midwinter, and the completion of half his soul’s journey behind him, he did not wake, and as the fox came toward him he saw further than ever before. Fronsac fell to the ground, asleep, and the fox approached Mani, healing his wound with delicate laps of its tongue, then dragging him away toward the shimmering horizon. There the trees vanished, and he found himself alone, surrounded by water, dwarfed by a brilliant sunset. Was this still his end? A merciful return to the spirit world, at last at one with the universe?

There he stood, as time passed, and time stood still, rocked by the waves and cradled by the sun, until the chill winter air turned, and he could see the shore once more. There, bathed in light, and surrounded by spring blooms stood Fronsac, returned to him. They met in the shallows and embraced, while the ocean lapped at their heels, and the sun filled them with light.

Mani returned to the waking world just as a wary scout retreated with the orders of his new Captain to strengthen the watch. Fronsac turned to him and asked, “What did you see?”

Mani reached for his hand. “We still have a long and great destiny together,” he confided. Mani leaned forward to kiss him, then took a step back, waiting.

Fronsac stared and brought his fingers to his lips, breathing heavily. “Did you dream this as well?” he asked.

“Of course,” Mani replied, letting the certainty of the dreamscape wash over him while Fronsac studied him with wide eyes.

“I think,” Fronsac began tentatively, his voice strained with surprise, “I think I have been waiting for you for a long time.” And he reached forward with shaking hands to gather Mani into an embrace.

“I have been waiting for the wolf all my life,” Mani murmured against Fronsac’s cheek. “I give thanks for the vision to have finally recognized him in you.” Mani threaded kisses down the peak of Fronsac’s cheekbone, across the bridge of his nose, and finally down to his lips, where their tongues and breath tangled into one spirit.

Fronsac’s broad hands clenched at his sides and he moaned as a sharp tension within him burst. Then his fingers flowed over Mani like water, spreading warmth up and down his spine and surrounding him in Fronsac’s strong, solid presence. “I have never done with this with another wolf,” Mani whispered, and he could feel Fronsac’s chuckle vibrating through his chest.

“I cannot say whether I have done this with a wolf, as I lack your sight, but we will work it out together,” he said, and took Mani’s hand to lead him toward the bed. There he spread Mani against the blankets and furs, and nipped playful kisses at Mani’s fingertips, and down the pad of his thumb to swirl his tongue at his wrist where the blood pulses most strongly. Mani threaded his other hand through Fronsac’s thick hair, running his nails lightly against the scalp, raising a groan from Fronsac, and then feathering them down its silky length. Fronsac drew his lips wetly down Mani’s forearm to the beginning of a bruise, and traced its edges with his tongue in a benediction, while Mani shivered as the dreamworld splintered through into waking life.

“Someday it will be I who soothes and carries you,” Mani promised.

Fronsac arched his head into the hand tickling his scalp and replied, “Until then, we can hold each other.”

Reaching for the laces of Fronsac’s shirt, Mani began to wrestle away the layers of cloth and furs that separated them, stealing feverish kisses between divesting Fronsac of his shirt, then stripping away his own, while Fronsac’s fingers struggled with their trousers. Bare, they grappled lightly, tickling ribs and knees, until Mani landed atop Fronsac and pinned his hands above his head, kissing him harshly as his hair spilled in a curtain around their heads. Fronsac slipped his hands from their grasp and drew tingling lines down Mani’s torso, tracing the ink pattern that marked him as a dreamwalker. Mani felt his heart pound as fingers glanced against his nipple, then had to break the kiss when his breath caught as Fronsac pinched and caressed there, lighting embers within him.

They flipped again and Mani choked back a moan when Fronsac’s wet breath puffed down his breastbone, and across the trembling ridges of his stomach. Fronsac teased and nibbled at the crease of his thigh and Mani found himself uncharacteristically short of patience, lost and forgotten in the face of his burning flesh and Fronsac’s deep gaze. He pleaded in his own tongue with words he knew Fronsac did not understand, but Fronsac still knew well their import as he smiled and lowered his mouth over Mani’s aching cock. The pleasure sliced through him, devastating as a blow, and Mani guided Fronsac’s hand to his mouth, where he suckled Fronsac’s fingertips to muffle his cries. Fronsac’s other hand pinned his jerking hips to the bed, circling deeply with his thumb, soothing while his mouth pushed Mani past endurance. With one last shudder he overflowed, curling his toes against the covers, trying desperately not to clench Fronsac’s hair too sharply.

Grinning broadly, Fronsac climbed up his body to lay against him, and Mani sprinkled lazy kisses at the corner of his upturned lips, sliding hands still weak with release down Fronsac’s taut waist and thighs. As their tongues chased each other he grasped Fronsac’s heavy cock and felt Fronsac’s growing pleasure in the shivers that shook them both. Fronsac looped his leg over Mani’s, drawing their bodies even closer together, and Mani arched into him, hungry for the contact.

Under Mani’s hands, Fronsac’s body begged and pleaded, gave thanks and offered absolution, spoke to him in the comingled languages of skin and spirit. As they kissed and Mani teased the tip of Fronsac’s cock with his thumb, Fronsac shuddered, fluttering unsteady fingers down Mani’s nape and back. Mani slipped down, breathing in the heavy scent of their bodies together. Licking Fronsac’s cock from base to tip, Mani heard him issue a desperate curse. When Mani took him down completely, Fronsac could not hold back a cry and Mani held him while he quaked and came. Mani pulled himself back up to Fronsac’s kiss, and laid back when Fronsac nestled into his chest, pillowing his head above Mani’s heart. Mani let out long breaths of satisfaction, burying his hands in Fronsac’s hair.

At last Fronsac stirred and raised his head, resting his chin against his hands on Mani’s chest. He sighed in contentment, but soon grew serious and worried his lip between his teeth. Hesitantly he asked, “Soon, we will return to Quebec City, and from there likely I will be sent to France. Perhaps it is too soon, or too much to ask, but will you come with me?”

Mani smoothed his fingers across Fronsac’s swollen lip and furrowed brow, and traced the trembling edges of his eyelashes. The fork in the stream had arrived, and just as in dream, this choice was no choice at all. It had been marked on his heart from the beginning, and the only shame was in not honoring this unexpected path. If he stayed with Fronsac, he would follow a stream leading to terrible danger and pain, to snarling jaws and his blood on the snow. But he knew now that even without the promise of the fox’s cunning and the rebirth beyond the shimmering sea that he had seen that morning, the prospect of living out his days, however many they might be, with Fronsac, dream of his flesh and spirit of his spirit, was enough to weather even the coldest winter.

“All my life I have had but one true dream,” he told Fronsac. “One dream that told me my heart’s greatest purpose.”

“And am I there?” Fronsac asked, lighting up. “Another man with a wolf in his heart - I was in your true dream?”

Mani smiled wide as laughter bubbled out of him. “Of course I will go with you,” he assured. “Our hearts were meant to journey together. You are not merely in my dream. You _are_ my dream.”

**Author's Note:**

> As Mani's dream promises, the film's ending need not come to pass, but the tricky fox has many stories to tell, and those are tales for another day.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Wolf's Brother](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1113622) by [alby_mangroves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alby_mangroves/pseuds/alby_mangroves)




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